Gov Ball Is Every Fan's Festival
Three days, MANY fandoms, and what you notice when none of them are yours.
Last year, I walked into Corona Park in Queens, NY for the first time and had the best weekend of my life. The Governor’s Ball Music Festival had somehow managed to curate the lineup of my dreams, pulling several of my most streamed artists straight out of the playlists on my phone. From Olivia Rodrigo and The Beaches to Role Model and Hozier, I was immediately sold on getting a VIP ticket. It was probably my busiest experience at a music festival. All I really did was enjoy the music — hopping from set-to-set, rather than going to meetups, checking out brand activations or taking time to truly enjoy the environment. Still, I had a perfect weekend and was fully set on going again in 2026.
But in January, the lineup dropped, and while it was filled with a ton of artists I liked, there weren’t any artists that I truly loved. Like…absolutely would travel across state lines to see. Would sing along to every single lyric of every single song. Just “oh they had a good album” or “I’m sure they’d put on a fun show.”
To me, the lineup was just…fine. Good, even. But not mine. I was too stubborn to pass on my plans to go again so I decided to attend, get to know the artists a bit more and spend a weekend in Corona Park for the festival vibes this time.
It turns out you start to notice a lot more when you go to a festival and actually slow down. And I learned a lot about other fandoms, when none of them were mine.
A lot of music festivals have a particular vibe attached to them. Rolling Loud for hip-hop, All Things Go for the girls and the gays, Shaky Knees for rock fans. But lately, Gov Ball has never really branded itself any one particular way. There’s no signature genre, no defining demographic. Just whoever’s biggest right now, spread across a few stages in Queens, and the fandoms sort themselves out. A pop singer on Friday, a Kpop group Saturday, and a rapper to close out the night on Sunday.
Some people see that as a weakness. I get it. But I’ve never seen it to be a flaw. I like too many kinds of music to want a festival that only speaks to one part of me.
What I didn’t expect was that Gov Ball’s identity had nothing to do with music at all. It took me three days — and one fairly unexpected throughline — to figure out what it actually was.
The weekend started on a high note, with Katseye and Lorde drawing the biggest crowds of the night. Those two acts on the main stage pretty much displayed the vibe “problem” that Gov Ball seems to have. I went from being surprised at how many children were swarming the VIP pit to being surrounded by millennials and feeling like I was in a coming-of-age movie just two hours later.
I’d say it’s truly interesting how Katseye seems to have such a large fanbase of kids. From the crowd, I saw small children sitting on their parents’ shoulders recording every moment, and stood next to a teenage girl performing dance moves and singing along as if she were ready to be brought onstage for a song. As amazed as I was that the children are allowed to listen to a group I’d certainly have been banned from streaming if I were their age, by 8pm, the entire atmosphere of the main stage field changed.
Lorde put on an absolutely cathartic performance that felt uniquely intimate. At one point toward the end of the show, she asked the fans to hold something she was sending out to the crowd. I assumed it was her way of leading a sing-along moment, but when I looked to my right I discovered I was wrong. A giant flag covered the massive crowd that read, “I don’t belong to anyone,” lyrics from “David,” the song she was performing, with the dates 2013-2026. It was a message celebrating her independence from the label she signed with when she was just 12-years-old — the end of a chapter and the start of a new, free one — shared with her fans. Shortly after, she ran into the field to close out the show with the fan favorite “Ribs.”
As someone who loves various genres of music, I could never describe the plurality of Gov Ball’s lineup to be a flaw. But when you looked out in the crowd, it was hard to miss some clashing here and there.
Some fans arrived hours before their artist’s set to claim their spot at the barricade — a personal choice, and not one I’d make, but a common enough practice at festivals. The tension came when those same fans, locked in for their headliner, had to sit through the artists performing before them. I saw complaints circulating online, particularly about fans sitting on the ground during other artists’ sets — visually disruptive and honestly just a little rude to the people behind them trying to actually watch. There was also a pretty funny wave of posts about Stray Kids fans who ended up caught in a 2Hollis mosh pit they absolutely did not see coming.
But it wasn’t all clash. Some of the most heartwarming posts of the weekend came from Jennie fans who spent the day camped at her stage on Sunday and shared they ended up genuinely falling in love with hip-hop duo Clipse, who performed just before her. That’s the cross-pollination Gov Ball accidentally creates — you showed up for your thing and left having discovered something else entirely.
This year felt notably more K-pop heavy than last year, with three high-billed acts being either K-pop or global pop stars — Katseye, Stray Kids, and Jennie. And with that came something I found genuinely cool to watch: K-pop fan culture taking up real, visible space at an American music festival. There seemed to be this level of preparation and community organization that most other fandoms just don’t bring to a festival setting.
One of the people who embodied that energy most was Sydney, a freelance photographer and portrait artist. She came to Gov Ball specifically to document Stray Kids’ return to New York through fancams and fan portraits the whole weekend. The only problem was that she had no budget to get there.
Sydney makes collages, drawing directly onto concert photos she takes, creating a style that’s become recognizable in the STAY community. A few weeks before Gov Ball, she started a series of daily drawings to raise enough money for a ticket. Within two weeks, between art sales and fans who just wanted to support her, she’d raised not only enough for a general ticket but enough for a VIP upgrade.
“I could not be here if it weren’t for them,” she told me. “I had no budget to go, and now because of this I had exactly how much I needed to almost a dollar.”
She’s been a STAY for less than a year. She got into K-pop after watching K-pop Demon Hunters — “literally a week later I was like, whoa” — and within a month she was all in. Which makes what the community did for her feel even more remarkable. She didn’t have years to build those relationships. She found her people fast, and they showed up.
The weekend before Gov Ball, she’d attended multiple fan-organized events. One was Promenade in the Park, a casual meetup in Central Park where STAYs handed out freebies, held up signs for an injured member who couldn’t perform, and just existed together in the way K-pop fandoms do.
“I think the vibes are generally very welcoming,” she said. “If you’re new, you could stumble into their show and become a fan and everyone will share love and welcome you in.”
As a photographer, Sydney approaches fan spaces differently than most media. “When I first started concert photography, I was told never take pictures of your favorite artists because you’ll get distracted by wanting to meet them,” she told me. “And the more I do it, the more I’m like — that’s crazy. The photos that come out of a show you’re passionate about, it shows.”
Before Gov Ball started, she’d been photographing fans outside when she noticed the official Gov Ball media team nearby, also trying to get content, but not quite connecting. “They weren’t engaging with them in the same way,” she said. “I was going in asking everyone who their bias was, and they’d just light up.” She laughed. “On the media side, it helps to come from a place of — I’m passionate about this, you are too, we relate.”
That perspective also shaped how she sees K-pop culture spreading beyond its own community. “Underground communities are starting to integrate it more and more,” she said. “Like 2Hollis — he’s tried, what if I do lightsticks? They’re definitely pulling from K-pop because they’re inspired by that level of fandom. The mainstream is going to be the last to do it.”
Sydney wasn’t the only one who felt the support of fan communities while at Gov Ball. I stood behind another woman at the Stray Kids set who had a handmade message on the back of her shirt announcing she was a finalist in an art competition and asking fellow STAYs to vote, with a QR code pasted below the message. In a crowd of thousands, she was still finding ways to rally her community.
Stray Kids delivered a high-energy headlining set that the fans reflected right back to them. But the weekend wasn’t without its complications. With severe weather approaching the area, festival organizers moved Stray Kids’ set up earlier so the entire festival could wrap by 7:30pm. Some fans who hadn’t arrived yet missed the set entirely. And when the storm hit right after they performed, it was torrential — the kind of rain that makes you question every life choice that led you to an outdoor festival.
Sunday brought its own weather drama. Slayyyter was performing at 1:30pm. It was an early slot for the dance-pop artist who has been actively blowing up, and the crowd was massive and ready. Her team threw out free flags before the set. The energy was high. And then an announcement came over the speakers asking everyone to take shelter away from the stage due to weather in the area.
Many people scattered, myself included. Slayyyter’s most dedicated fans at the barricade stayed put.
When the rain stopped and she finally came back out, the crowd erupted. “Slayyterball” chants filled the air. It was one of those moments that you can’t manufacture, with a fandom that simply refused to leave, getting rewarded for it.
Throughout the weekend, I found myself pulling away from the crowd-watching to actually be in it. Earlier this month, I covered Festiverse, Live Nation’s official festival fan engagement community, in our June newsletter, and I made it a point to attend a couple of their meetups throughout the weekend. It was a really special community to witness, like a mini family reunion where people who had spent months chatting were meeting up for the first time. Even if you knew nobody there, the whole crowd was welcoming. At one point on Saturday, I caught 2Hollis’ set with someone I’d met at the Festiverse meetup just before. Neither of us were particularly familiar with his music. We had a great time anyway. That’s the whole point.
By Sunday night, I’d spent three days watching fandoms I didn’t belong to. I’d stood in crowds that weren’t mine, observed rituals I didn’t fully understand, and found myself genuinely moved by things I hadn’t expected to be moved by.
And then A$AP Rocky closed out the festival. By that point, I’d spent the entire weekend trying to figure out what connected all of this. I found myself standing next to a dad at the back of the pit — his kids somewhere near the front — asking me to explain why A$AP was such a big deal. I did my best. And as I looked around, I noticed something I’d been seeing all weekend but hadn’t quite named yet.
Knicks jerseys. Everywhere.
It had been building all weekend. There were flags flying high at the top of the main stage, many artists shouted out the Finals mid-set, Diplo performed in a Knicks jersey, and the game was even streamed somewhere on the festival grounds. The New York Knicks are in the finals for the first time since 1973, and the city was feeling it in every single space it occupied… including a music festival in Queens.
Sydney told me that even before Gov Ball, at a Stray Kids pre-party event, they were showing the Knicks game on the venue screens. Half the crowd were STAYs. Half were Knicks fans. They ended up talking, connecting, cheering together for completely different reasons and somehow ending up in the same moment.
That’s New York.
Gov Ball doesn’t have a genre. It doesn’t have a tribe. What it has instead is a city. And New York is hip-hop and K-pop and indie rock and pop and everything else simultaneously. Of course its festival sounds like that. The diversity of the lineup isn't a lack of vision. It's a reflection of the place. And sometimes, what unifies all of it isn't a genre or an artist or a carefully curated aesthetic. Sometimes it's a basketball team one win away from ending a 52-year drought, and a city that shows up for itself no matter what.
While I definitely loved a ton of the artists who performed throughout the weekend, I didn’t really consider myself to be a member of any of their fandoms. It was a stark difference from last year, where I would have told you the opposite.
But I think I came away with something better than a perfect lineup. I came away with a reminder of what fandom actually looks like from the outside — people who found their thing and brought it fully into a space that wasn’t designed for it specifically. The K-pop fans with their lightsticks and photocards. The Lorde crowd holding a flag for a chapter they’d lived through without fully knowing it. Sydney, who sold fan art every day just to be in the there.
You start to notice a lot more when you slow down. And when none of the fandoms are yours, you get to actually see them.